The first chapter of John's Gospel explains what Genesis 1 implies: Jesus is the Word of God, the Creating Word. All things were created by Him, the Logos (Word).
Every part of the universe - rocks, minerals, stars, comets, animals, and humans - was Created by Christ the Savior. The Scriptures speak often of the Father-Son relationship, witnessed and taught by the Holy Spirit.
Many theories of Creation exist, from the bizarre and obscene to the strangely robotic, with chaos reacting against chaos to produce order. That is like teaching that four little children in the home will eventually clean and paint the interior, simply by playing, fighting, and wetting themselves.
Genesis teaches that God created by the Word, in six 24-hour days. This account is terribly embarrassing to modernist theologians who want to compromise with science, but many of the great scientists of the past believed in Creation. And even if they did not, Creation is revealed to believers through God's Word.
One great miracle is revealed in the Scriptures - God became man, born of a Virgin. No one can explain this with human reason. No one expected it, in spite of centuries of prophecy. The modernists avoid this topic with determination and energy. The whole point of rationalistic theology is to use the words without their meaning.
God created this order (kosmos in Greek, like cosmetics) and man generates disorder by his foolishness and sin. Since man inherited his sinful nature from Adam, God designated His Only-Begotten Son to be the Savior, to restore order by dying for the sins of the world.
God determined that His Word would convey Christ to people, plant faith in their hearts, and sustain their faith. Only God can turn disorder into order, and this is done by faith receiving the righteousness of Christ.
Harmony in the Garden
When beginning gardeners ask me questions about their gardening problems, their pain usually comes from ignoring the basics of the created world. One woman was married to an engineer, but she could not understand why her roses, planted on an incline she built up, were not doing well.
I said, "Gravity. You put the roses in the driest part, because water moves downhill. You will have to water extra to make up for the elevation."
Timid rose gardeners want the flowers but ignore the rules. "You have very large bushes that will not bloom, because you have let them fill up with dead wood. The roses want to be pruned, but you are preserving them like the bones of saints." My solution was to prune away more than 1/3 of the bushes, with no supervision allowed. Two weeks later, the bushes were packed with blooms, as I predicted. Tears of sorrow flowed after the pruning and tears of joy flowed after the blooming. As Luther observed, women are more easily moved to sorrow or joy than men.
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| My neighbor has shaped his crepe myrtle into a vase, 20 feet tall, full of blooms. This one should have been pruned the previous year. One resident turned his into a few strands of branches with blooms - weird. |
My crepe myrtle bush was rather shapeless and ugly in the front yard. Our helper pruned it, and he shaped it very well. Crepe myrtle thrives in heat, and this one gets the run-off from watering the rose garden. Besides that, I placed red wigglers at the base and added organic matter, like clumps of grass scraped off the mower. Those clumps disappeared, as if devoured by grateful earthworms.
The crepe myrtle has been a mass of blooms for weeks now. The bushes can grow to 20 feet, so it will be shaped again this fall to stop crowding the mailbox and bloom with abandon next year.
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| Moonlit vinca minor blooms well int the shade and holds down soil with steely roots. |
When I was starting Wormhaven I, our garden in Midland, Michigan, I was pretty ignorant about what to plant where. A landscaper suggested vinca minor (periwinkle) for an area always in deep shade. The strands looked thin at first but they rooted and spread like strawberries over time. They bloomed in the shade, like stars in early evening hours.
I just bought this vinca for the area under the maple tree. Pruning has given the area more sunlight, but maple roots are difficult work around, so I will let periwinkle be the ground cover. Vinca major can be invasive, but vinca minor stays in place.
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| Greetings to Aachen, blooms in the shade, blooms even better in sunlight. |
The perimeter, where I can stack some good soil, will be the place for Gruss an Aachen, a rose which tolerates shade but loves the sun. When I am done sawing away at old branches, the front yard will have even more sun. We are fortunate in having sunlight fall on the entire yard at various times, which gives me a lot of flexibility in planting.
The apostasy of this age, as predicted the pastoral epistles, assumes that we can change everything to suit ourselves if we reverse the rules, natural law. Luther said, "God commands what is good for us."
